Sophia Michaels
Katy Perry and Thomas Rhett dive into the dreamy minds of their young artist selves in the new video for “Where We Started,” out Tuesday.
The Patrick Tracy-directed video captures the two musicians — Rhett in a denim jacket, Perry in a flowy dress and corset — as they sing to each other from separate ethereal rooms and reminisce about their teenage dreams.
In her verse, Perry reflects on her fraught journey to stardom — she released a Christian album under her birth name as a teen — and recalls “playin’ my guitar/Singin’ them covers in an empty room.”
“Those days when you’re brokenhearted/And you’re getting knocked down and you’re saying/Don’t know how far we’re gonna go,” the two musicians harmonize at the end of the song as they join each other in the video. “Just look at that road and think about where we started.”
Perry’s song with Rhett marks her only release of 2022 so far after working with DJ Alesso on “When I’m Gone” last year. “I loved being able to create a dreamy world for ‘Where We Started,’ going back to the Nashville singer-songwriter roots of where I started,” Perry said in a press release.
The music video comes six months after the track was dropped as part of Rhett’s LP of the same name. The album, which also featured songs like “Church Boots,” “Half of Me” with Riley Green, and “Death Row” with Russell Dickerson and Florida Georgia Line‘s Tyler Hubbard, debuted at No. 12 on the Billboard 200.
“Working with Katy has been a really collaborative process,” said Thomas Rhett in a press release. “From tracking the song in the studio, to performing it on American Idol, to this video: her input has made this whole experience really special for me.”
Rhett has long cited Perry as an artist he admires. In 2014, the country star told Rolling Stone he was a “huge fan of Katy Perry,” after describing how he has a “pop side of myself,” along with his country roots. After Where We Started, Rhett has since worked with Nicky Youre on a remix of his viral “Sunroof,” and joined Ben Rector on “What Makes a Man.”
As for Perry, who’s a judge on American Idol, she’s currently on the fifth leg of her Las Vegas residency, Play. She recently shared with Rolling Stone that she’s at a point in her life where she’s “finding a really wonderful balance,” but plans to start making music soon. (“I’m never not” writing music, she said.)
“It’s not like I’m heading into retirement,” Perry said. “Trust, sweetheart, she’s got a couple of aces still left up her sleeve.”
